


honey sweet

by duckmoles



Category: Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Banter, Coming Out, Established Relationship, Fluff and Humor, Friendship, Happy Ending, Idiots (affectionate) in Love, Light Angst, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, The Inherent Romance of Discord Calls
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-03
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-15 14:15:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29809659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/duckmoles/pseuds/duckmoles
Summary: The thing is, if they were anyone else, Dream would never shut up about it. He'd shove it in their faces. He'd make matching skins for him and George, and matching usernames, and call George his boyfriend to anyone in earshot or in the same call, and they'd have stupid Minecraft dates and stupid Minecraft weddings and George would carry him in CS:GO and let Dream preen about him, and Dream would ship him to America and tackle him in the airport and indulge in their height difference every day for the rest of their damn lives.The problem is - he's dreamwastaken, and he's GeorgeNotFound, and they're not anyone else.(Or: Four times Dream and George told one of their friends, and one time they told everyone else.)
Relationships: Clay | Dream/GeorgeNotFound (Video Blogging RPF)
Comments: 53
Kudos: 792
Collections: Completed stories I've read





	honey sweet

**Author's Note:**

> heyo welcome to this minecraft rpf i never thought i'd write but have been enabled to do so! standard disclaimers apply. 
> 
> a note that there's a brief description of what could be a panic attack at the end but it's over quickly and it ends very happily. otherwise, hope you enjoy!

It's easy, in the end, because he's Dream and he's George and they've known each other long enough that Dream would recognize him by how he breathes. It's hard, because he's George, and he's Dream, and there's a million eyes on both of them at all times, and Dream knows that if he'd so much as breathed there'd be clips of it covering the internet in seconds.

The problem, Dream decides, isn't with them. It's with everyone else. 

"You're a fucking idiot," Sapnap says when Dream asks. His keyboard clacks from where he’s playing Fortnite with Punz.

"You're so dumb," Dream says, and flips off the camera even though he knows Sapnap can't see it.

"Fuck!" Sapnap yells emphatically, probably because he sucks at Fortnite and wouldn't be able to win a game if it killed him (and it did eventually, so ha). 

Dream rolls his eyes, waits for Sapnap to finish losing. "As I was saying," he starts, "before you started sucking-"

"Your _mom_ sucks."

"-me and George were thinking we'd announce it on Twitter."

Sapnap has already started another game. "Wait," he says, "First off, that’s a stupid idea. Have you even told anyone else about this other than like, me and your mom? Second off, let me vc Punz for one round, I'll be right back."

"Buddy has disconnected from your channel," TeamSpeak announces in mockery. 

Dream takes off his headset and bangs his head on his desk in despair. He texts George, _Sapnap is so useless_.

 _lol_ , George replies a few minutes later. _he's on punz's stream_. 

Of course he is. 

Dream reluctantly pulls up Punz's stream and sits back a little in his chair to watch as Sapnap and Punz fight their way through the royale. _He's so bad_ , Dream texts back, even though Sapnap just won a 3v1.

 _sure_ , George replies. 

And because Sapnap can only ever clutch once per gaming session, he dies a few minutes later due to him being actually blind.

"I was throwing," Sapnap says, voice a little quieter when filtered through the stream. "Can't let them know how good I am or I'll be targeted." 

Dream is almost tempted to hop into their call to laugh at them. Instead, he rolls his eyes, pulls up that video he's been procrastinating for a week, and lets the soothing thoughts of SEO and viewer retention fill his brain, the sounds of Punz and Sapnap bickering as soothing background noise. 

Several rounds and several losses later, Sapnap pops back into TeamSpeak. The sound of him rejoining jars Dream a little out of his video editing headspace a little, and it takes a moment for him to realize Sapnap is bitching about his losses. 

"First off, no I haven't," Dream interrupts. He closes out his stream tabs so there's less overlapping audio. "I'll tell everyone else first, of course, but I need to figure out how I'm telling everyone _now._ also, you're literally so bad at Fortnite." 

"Dream, if you played Fortnite you'd be dead in five seconds." 

"Yeah," Dream says, "but I don't play Fortnite." 

"So you can't judge me for my Fortnite skills because _you_ have none." 

Dream huffs under his breath. "That's not - you know what, I called to ask you a question, and you still haven't answered me." 

Sapnap groans. "It's a dumb question," he says. "You pulled me out of gaming for _that_." 

"'Gaming,'" Dream mocks. "What're you, 12?"

"Old enough for… your _mom_." 

Dream's eyebrows shoot up. "What? What?" he says, dragging the syllables out, incredulous as both of them start laughing. 

"Oh, shut up," Sapnap says through his laughing, "you know I didn't mean it that way." 

"Uh huh, sure," Dream says. "Tell that to the FBI." 

"Hey, if anyone's getting in trouble here it's your mom."

Just as Dream says, "Oh, come on Sapnap," his phone dings again. A text from George, which Sapnap seems to catch onto. 

"Oooo," Sapnap says, and puts on his horrific faux British accent, "Is it Georgie? Your widdle Gogy?" Sometime halfway through the sentence his voice morphs higher until it's completely changed into unrecognizable baby talk. 

_what'd he say_ , George asks while Sapnap devolves into incoherence in the background. Sapnap has been spending too much time with Quackity. 

_you know what_ , Dream types back, _absolutely nothing_. 

George sends him the rolling eyes emoji, which is cringe enough Dream regrets ever applying for MunchyMC staff all those years ago. 

"Are you done?" Dream asks when Sapnap's stopped his tirade. 

"One more," Sapnap says, and takes a deep breath. He then starts making exaggerated kissing noises into the microphone for a full five seconds until he stops. Dream wonders how Sapnap is considered a legal adult.

"Alright, alright," Sapnap says. "I'm done." 

"Only took you an entire stream and ten whole minutes of literally being toxic." 

"As I was saying, you're an idiot." 

"Hey! I thought you were done." 

"And also, revealing it on Twitter is the dumbest thing you could possibly do. Think of all the clout, and, more importantly, adsense, you're missing out on. Secondly, imagine the click bait title of 'Minecraft but I have a boyfriend.'" 

Dream drums his fingers on the table and tries not to laugh at Sapnap for being the most useless man alive. "Those are the same two arguments," he points out. 

"Yeah, and? They're both right."

Sapnap's not wrong, though Dream thinks a better title would probably be something along the lines of "Minecraft but I come out." He can already see the memes. The trending tags. The joke MCC teams that put him, George, Lizzie, and Joel together. He groans and buries his face in his hands. 

"Hey, man." Sapnap's voice is a little softer now. His serious voice. "You know you don't even have to tell anyone if you don't want to, right? Knowing George he's probably fine either way. long as he gets your nudes or whatever." 

"Shut the hell up," Dream says half halfheartedly. 

"You know I'm right," Sapnap says, content and smug. 

"Hng," Dream replies coherently. The thing is - the thing is, if they were anyone else, he'd never shut up to anyone about it. He'd shove it in their faces. He'd make matching skins for him and George, and matching usernames, and call George his boyfriend to anyone in earshot or in the same call, and they'd have stupid Minecraft dates and stupid Minecraft weddings and George would carry him in CS:GO and let Dream preen about him in the chat while also being horrifyingly toxic, and Dream would ship him to America and jump him in the airport and indulge in their height difference every day for the rest of their damn lives. The problem is - he's dreamwastaken, and he's GeorgeNotFound, and they're not anyone else.

"Hey," Sapnap says. "Dude. This is like, not Dream behavior. What happened to mister 'social media YouTube algorithm god?' You know how to handle the pr for this." 

God, does he though? He's spent so much time learning how to grow an audience, to go viral, but he never learned about this part of it. The part where he's now a Famous Person. The part where he posts a picture of his cat on Twitter and his fans zoom in on his shirt in the background and find the exact brand within minutes, and then proceed to make fun of him for it. 

"No, you," Dream says, too preoccupied to think of anything else to say. 

"Very smart. One thousand million IQ comeback right there. Put that in the comps." 

"Fuck off." 

"And there's another one. Dream, you're full of zingers today." 

Dream hangs up. 

-

Bad is both the best and the worst about it when Dream tells him. This is mostly because the first thing he does is ask if it's a troll, and the second thing he does is ask if Skeppy's recording, and the third thing he does is ask if Dream's recording, and the fourth thing he does is burst into tears. Dream does the fourth thing too, but in his case it's because he falls out of his chair laughing at him. In his defense, George had made a very funny joke. 

"Oh my gosh," Bad says, voice more than a little muffled. "You - you two muffinheads." 

Dream picks himself off the floor and back onto the chair. He doesn't need #dreamfell to start trending again. "Hey, uh," he says, and then clears his throat, trying to make his voice sound serious. "You don't have to cry." He may have laughed at him, but this is _Bad_. 

"I'm not crying," Bad says, and then sniffles. 

"Sure," George says, just as Discord dings with the sound of someone joining the call, "then why are you sniffling?" 

"Did Bad get covid again?" Sapnap asks. "Bad, we've told you to stop going to so many parties." 

"I don't -" Bad starts indignantly, then says, "Wait, Sapnap." he sniffles again. There's a distinct rustle of fabric that makes Dream think he's wiping his nose. "Did you know?" 

"Huh? Know what?" 

"Did you _know?_ " Bad emphasizes that through his teeth. 

"Bad, I have no idea what you're talking about. I think you're forgetting things in your old age." 

"I'm not - I'm not old!" 

Dream thinks that he and George have silently agreed to let this play out. 

Bad sputters for a bit before settling on, "You know."

"I don't know, because you won't tell me what it is I know or don't know." 

"You know. Them."

"Who?" 

"Dream and George!" 

A long pause. Dream entertains the idea of starting up Minecraft to practice a bit for the next MCC while Sapnap and Bad duke it out. 

"What did Dream and George do?" Sapnap finally asks. 

"I - nothing!" Bad says. 

Dream messages George, _dodgebolt practice?_

"Ok," Sapnap says. "Clearly it's not nothing. Now you have to tell me." 

"What? No I don't!" 

_ok_ , George replies, which is the best Dream is going to get from him. 

"Yeah you do. You got me all interested." 

"I'm not telling you anything. Ask Dream and George, they're literally in this call." 

"No, no, you brought up, you have to tell me." 

"I don't have to tell you anything!" 

"Uh, you kinda have to." 

Dream logs onto the Dodgebolt server to find George already there. They start a game. 

"I don't have to tell you anything!" 

"You do now." 

"No I don't!" 

"Mm, yeah you do." 

George dives in for the arrow first. Dream looks down at his Minecraft feet, hops around as erratically as he can. 

Badboyhalo screams in frustration. "Dream, George, can you _please_ help me here." 

Dream almost feels an ounce of pity for him and unmutes his mic. In that brief moment of distraction, George shoots and hits him dead on. Dream shouldn't have expected more. 

"Bad," Dream says. "Don't worry about it. He already knows." 

"Aw, I was having fun, " Sapnap says. 

"At my expense!" Bad says, indignant. Then, sounding like he's going to cry again, "I'm so happy for you guys." 

George laughs a little under his breath as the next round starts up. Dream grins at the sound. 

"Oh my goodness," Bad says. "I wanted to stream in an hour and now I'm going to show up all sniffly because of you two." 

George hums, picks up the arrow that appears at the center of the arena, and starts aiming. "You know," he says as Dream starts jumping around as erratically as he can, aware of George's bow pointed at him, "technically that's your own fault. If you hadn't given us both staff we wouldn't be here right now." 

Dream leans back in his chair as the death screen flashes again and rubs his eyes with his hand. "Yeah, Bad. That's where we met. So you know, you showing up to your stream with covid again is your fault." 

"I don't have covid!" 

"That's what they all say," Sapnap says. 

Bad continues as if Sapnap had never spoken: "And _you're right_. You should be thanking _me_. Me, Badboyhalo, the person that's made this whole thing possible." Dream rolls his eyes. So smug and for nothing. 

"What, covid?" George butts in. 

"Stop bringing up covid!" 

The third round starts. This time, Dream grabs the arrow as fast as he can, starts lining up his shot.

George's Minecraft character is barely moving, only shuffling back and forth as he says, "Alright, alright, don't let it go to your head, Bad." 

Dream lets go just as he finishes his sentence, and George suddenly jerks to the left, turning around and narrowly avoiding the arrow. "Ha!" he says. "You're so predictable." 

"Look who's talking when you're the one who's going to miss the next -" 

George starts laughing in victory. Dream buries his face in his hands, not looking at the red death screen. 3-0. How is he this out of practice. 

"Oh my God, Dream, I actually just destroyed you. You didn't even win one. You just got destroyed. _Yes_!" 

"What're you guys even doing?" Bad asks. 

"Flirting," Sapnap says as George gloats, "I just destroyed Dream in Dodgebolt!" 

Dreams recovered enough to defend himself. "That's not true," he says. "First of all-" 

"That's totally true, he lost 3-0!"

"-first of all, I was distracted by Bad asking all those questions." 

"I was listening to the same questions and I wasn't distracted." 

"And, and, second of all, I haven't practiced Dodgebolt at all since the last MCC and I know for a fact George has been messing around with Quackity on the practice server." 

George tsks. "Sure, sure. Make your excuses." 

"... I can't believe you two," Bad says finally. He sounds at once exasperated and fond. 

"Yeah, you can," Sapnap says. 

Bad sighs. "Yeah, I can." 

Dream drums his fingers a little on his mouse absently. "In all seriousness though," he starts. 

"Dream's being serious? Is this a serious stream?" George says, mocking. 

Dream barrels on: "In all seriousness, Bad, you're right. Thanks, Bad. For, uh, making this all happen. Couldn't have done any of this - YouTube, Twitch - " 

"Me," George says, completely deadpan. Sapnap starts laughing.

"- without you, man. Thanks." Dream pulls up Bad's Twitch as he finishes talking. 

"What Dream said," George says. "But I get to do _him_ instead." Sapnap makes a noise that distinctively sounds like he's gagging. 

"George," Dream says, fond. 

"Language," Bad says automatically in response to George, and then says, "Aw." He sniffs again. "You _muffins_."

Dream smiles. All these years, from the early days of MCPvP to MunchyMC to where they are now - Bad's been like an older brother to him. Dream remembers getting on call with him and George and Sapnap for the first time, all four of them, Sapnap with his high squeaky pre-puberty voice and Bad already exasperated and telling them off and George wry and witty and blazingly intelligent, and Dream remembers laughing harder than he'd ever laughed in his entire life. 

He's never been good at expressing his feelings out loud without tripping over all his words, which is probably why he and George took so long in the first place. Dream signs onto his Twitch alt and donates Bad a few hundred. Bad can't refund him if he doesn't know it's Dream. 

"Ew," Sapnap says finally. "That was grossly sweet, and I'm the one that just ate half a pack of Oreos." 

"You're so gross," George says, even though Dream knows for a fact George mowed through several bags of crisps just a few hours ago. "You're - you're grosser than Karl after he eats beans." 

Dream makes a face. He's been on too many calls where Karl spends the whole time being disgusting directly into the mic to not be traumatized by the thought of Karl going to Taco Bell again. "Maybe not that gross," he says. 

"Don't defend him, Dream. You know I'm right. He's probably getting the crumbs everywhere." 

"Am not," Sapnap says through a mouthful of Oreos. He definitely is getting the crumbs everywhere. 

"Sapnap!" Bad says. 

"What?" Sapnap swallows heavily. "It's not even that many crumbs. I can clean it up after." 

"You know what, I don't even want to know the state of your PC," Bad finally says, more than a little painfully. "What were we talking about?" 

"Wow, Bad," George says. "I'm a little hurt. We tell you the biggest possible news we could tell and you just forget?" 

Dream laughs a little under his breath. 

"I didn't forget!" Bad protests. "I'm so - I'm so so happy for you guys. Did you tell anyone else?" 

Dream shakes his head, although Bad can't see it. "Sapnap, of course," he says. "Um. I told my mom." 

"Ponk," George adds. "But only because he snuck into a call while Dream was -" 

Dream jumps to attention, swinging his mouse with the movement and almost hitting himself in the face. "Woah, Woah, we don't need to tell Bad about that. Leave it at that, George, leave it at that." 

"Uh huh," Bad says.

"Uh huh," Sapnap repeats. 

"Uh huh," George mocks. 

Dream wonders why he's friends with these people. He wonders why he's maybe-boyfriends-what-else-would-they-be-oh-god-they-need-a-conversation-about-labels-don't-they with George. 

"Uh huh," Dream sighs. 

-

The thing about his sister finding out is inevitable, and also something he's been putting off so long he would've taken it to the grave if he could. Drista threatens to steal his Minecraft account, first. He threatens to get their parents to ground her. They stand on equal footing here, until she then threatens to leak Dream's face reveal.

"Ok, ok, now that's going too far," Dream says. 

She folds her arms over her chest, and Dream folds his will to her whim, and gets George on a FaceTime call with her.

"You're not Dream," he says when it finally loads. 

"No," Drista says. "I'm not. You're George." 

George stares at her. "Right," he says. 

"You're dating my brother," she accuses. George nods solemnly. Dream can tell he's deeply amused by his own fake-seriousness, the kind he only gets when he's roleplaying SpongeBob or pretending he'll get above top ten in Rocket Spleef. 

"And you're sistering my boyfriend," George says placidly. 

Dear god. Dream tries to duck a little more behind his sister, so she doesn't see the way he goes bright red. So maybe they did agree on a label, as much as it pained the both of them to do so - that doesn't mean Dream is in any way close to being used to it yet. 

She glares at the screen harder. Finally, she says, "You know, he dropped me once when I was little." 

Dream finally lets himself within sight of his own phone camera to nearly tackle Drista and grab for the phone. Drista, unfortunately, is both used to this and does not have "playing Minecraft" as her career, and ducks neatly out of the way to point the camera at him, who has just narrowly avoided crashing into the wall. 

Dream can hear George laugh, and his utter feeling of affection for the sound is almost enough to stop him from saying, "Alright, that's enough, that's enough!" 

Both Drista and George stare at him. George is stone faced, and Drista is grinning. 

"I said I wanted to talk to him," she says, primly, and Dream wonders where she learned that from, and how he can make it stop. 

"Yeah, Dream," George says. "Are you ashamed of me or something?" 

Dream hates him. "Five minutes," he says. 

Drista's already turned her attention to George, but she waves Dream away absently. "I'll call you over when we're done." 

Dream leaves the room and regrets putting that much soundproofing on it.

He marches to his bedroom, fidgets with his bedsheets, before sitting down at the desk with his laptop. Drista may have taken his phone and kicked him out of the room with the PC, but that doesn't stop him from tryharding pvp practice with a trackpad. 

He’s almost winning when Drista walks in and drops his phone on the table. 

"Really?" she asks when he sees what he's doing. Dream doesn't know what she expected from him. 

“Really,” he says, tabbing out to grab his phone. Somehow, she’s migrated from FaceTime to a long abandoned Discord group chat that Dream vaguely remembers adding people to until it was full while sleep deprived and egged on by Karl, where Sapnap and Antfrost of all people have joined. Dream can hear them making fun of him and George both through the quiet speakers.

"I hate you," Dream says loudly, so everyone can hear. 

Drista smiles, twists a lock of hair around her finger, and sticks her tongue out. It's probably illegal to strangle her. Probably. They do live in Florida, after all, so there's probably at least one loophole here he could take advantage of. “No you don’t,” she says, very smugly. 

Dream sighs. “No, I don't.” 

He holds the phone up to his ear, hears Ant say, “Red’s _never_ wrong,” and promptly disconnects. He puts his phone back on the table and sighs. “How did you even get on Discord?” he asks. 

She shrugs. “It was George’s idea to move to Discord, and...” She holds her hands up in the air. “You have a lot of group chats!” 

Dream decides he hates George almost as much as he loves him. "He didn't say anything weird, did he?" 

Her grin is wicked. "Nothing much," she says in a tone that implies that everything George said was weird. "Just how much you cried the day you confessed." 

Dream can feel the flush come on, starting from his ears and spreading onto his cheeks and neck. "Shut up," he says intelligently. Maybe he did cry a little, but he had been running on three hours of sleep in three days, and he had been obsessively reading the comments on the last Manhunt, and maybe in between all of that he had been writing and rewriting in his notes app a very long confession he never got to send because he blurted the whole thing out while filming a video for George's channel. A few tears were probably warranted. 

"He cried too," Dream finally says after a long beat of silence. 

His sister stares at him.

"Okay," Dream says, "He didn't. But he did reciprocate and say he likes me too, which if you know him is even better." 

She nods solemnly, appeased. "Knew it," she says. 

…Why is he letting his baby sister make fun of him again? 

She flops down on his bed, kicks her feet up in the air a little. "I like George," she says. 

… Right, because she's his sister and he unfortunately loves her. 

"That's good," he says. "But even if you didn't I wouldn't care." He'd care a little. 

"You'd care a little," she says. 

Dream wishes he had a pillow to throw at her. He gets up, goes over to the bed, picks up the pillow by her head, and half heartedly throws it at her. She catches it. 

"You've already met George," he points out. 

"Yeah, but that was different. I thought he was just like another one of your gamer friends, like Pandas. It's different." 

Dream thinks on that. He doesn't really feel like it's that much different. George is George is George. Has always been. Will always be. Dream still makes fun of him while George is screensharing Eclipse and writing shitty code comments, still builds the nether portal for him when they're doing challenges, still falls asleep with him on calls and sometimes wakes up just in time to hear him sleep talk. "It's not that different," he says. 

Drista opens one eye to stare at him. "Is it not?"

Dream shrugs. "Not really. I've known George for a while. more than a few years. It's not a major change or anything it's just - it's just, y'know. We put a different label on it. Or something."

"What, now you make dnf jokes and it hits different?"

"I - I don't - I still can't believe you know about dnf." 

"It's trending on Twitter every other day, and I'm a young teenager in the twenty-first century. I _wish_ I didn't know what dnf was." 

Dream drags his hand down his face. Sometimes, he regrets the early ship bait, the little calculated nudges he had made in the spur of the moment, the stupid romantic music he'd put on to watch George squirm until it all became too much and Dream was the one squirming instead. Only sometimes, though. "I don't think I can legally relate to that last bit," Dream says mildly. "George would kill me. Actually, Sapnap and Bad would also kill me." He pauses. "Quackity and Karl might also kill me." 

"All your friends are murderers, I get it," Drista says. 

"Well," Dream says.

There's a long silence. 

Dream flops down on the bed next to his sister, covers his eyes with one hand. 

"Seriously, though," Drista says. “Is it, I don’t know, like, weird?”

Dream stays quiet. There’s something different about laying in bed in the dark on Discord, quietly talking to Bad about how much he cares for George, how easy and terrifying the transition was from loving him to slapping a label on it, how sometimes he slips up and finds himself pining from afar, listening to Bad's soft and gentle encouragement, and this - side by side with his baby sister as she asks him if he thinks his feelings are weird.

"No," he says. "It's not weird." Then, because he has to, "Not as weird as _you_." 

He laughs to himself as she elbows him and starts spewing indignities. Little sisters never change. 

-

Telling Tommy is entirely an accident. Dream hadn't been planning on it at all, partly because he thinks his relationship status isn't a 16 year old's business, partly because discussing that with said 16 year old sounds like Dream's idea of hell, and mostly because he knows Tommy will never ever let him live it down. 

And yet here he is. He had just wanted an earnest conversation about the YouTube algorithm and Twitch's own ecosystem, and somewhere along the line shipping had come up, and Dream had let it slip, easy as nothing else, and hadn't even noticed until Tommy said, "Wait, are you serious?" and had to rewind the last ten minutes of conversation in his head. 

"Dream?" Tommy had asked after Dream had been silent for an entire two minutes. 

Dream had been silent for another minute before he finally unmuted his mic, tried to play it off, before blurting the whole thing out, because he doesn't know when to shut up. 

Dream very much does not want to think about how he ended up here. He thinks he'll never live "How to Sex 5" down. He thinks he never wants to sit on a call with the entirety of the Sleepy Boys while they make fun of him and lend support in equal measures ever again. 

"Tommy, why is everyone here," Tubbo asks as he joins the vc. Three voices start speaking simultaneously, Tommy's "Well, Big D's having a bit of an explanation" overlapping with Wilbur's "Vc 6 is the hot spot" overlapping with Phil's laughter to create a mess of noise and chaos. 

Dream finds silent comradery in the quiet clicking of Techno's mouse as he bed mines for netherite with Phil in the background. Finds even more comradery in Callahan's forever muted mic. 

"Dream, can I tell Tubbo?" Tommy asks, and Dream DMs Callahan that this is why #vc-6 was a mistake. 

"Sure," Dream says as Callahan sends back the xd emoji. Not for the first time in his life, Dream is sorely tempted to doxx him. 

He should probably be more careful, he thinks as Tommy starts rambling in his very Tommy way, but he trusts them. They're smart, and savvy, and have been doing this longer than even he has. and Dream's never been one for hiding anything, all jokes about face reveals aside. If not for propriety, and George's own sense of privacy and the fact that it's officially unofficially a secret anyone among their friends who asks can know, he would have already gone all out - gone to Disney, yelled it to random strangers, spammed it on Twitter, made George do silly matching profile pictures with him, booked them both a flight to Paris so they can be sappy in front of the Eiffel Tower. Hell, he would've even logged onto his long dead Facebook profile to change his relationship status to taken. _Ha_ , Dream thinks vacantly. _Dream is taken_. 

He'll take what he can get, though, with this: his friends, teasing and laughing at him and at each other. Cozy, and intimate, and nothing at all like the terror and glory of the bright lights of the public eye. 

"Does this mean I can't flirt with Gogy anymore?" Wilbur asks. Phil starts laughing again.

Technoblade, for some god forsaken reason, chooses this moment to speak, his last time being when he made a quip about homophobia and left them all to stew in silence for a solid twenty seconds. "GeorgeNotFound doesn't need another tall white boy who fawns over him, Wilbur." 

Techno, for all he denounces stan Twitter, evidently spends too much time on it to be healthy. Dream knows this because he also spends too much time on stan Twitter to be healthy. 

"You never know!" Wilbur says cheerfully. "You never know!"

"No, you can't," Dream says belatedly, only so that his refusal is on the record more than anything else. 

"Besides," Phil continues, "wouldn't George go after you instead, Techno? Aren't you and Dream around the same height?" 

Dream is going to transform into a baby zombie and go after Phil himself. He knew that sending that stupid height chart in the general chat to make fun of Quackity's height was a mistake. Thankfully, just as Tommy bursts into a loud peal of laughter at the comment, Techno quickly saves the day with, "Oh no no no Phil you're better than that. C'mon." 

"Y'know, I am a minor," Tommy declares, in a way that implies that he will continue saying this while also making a million dick and sex jokes per minute. 

"Fuck off, Tommy," Wilbur says. 

Dream is tempted to leave the voice call entirely until Tubbo asks a very important question regarding the next few lore streams, clearly his reason for popping in in the first place. Dream breathes a sigh of relief, is almost tempted to start drafting the adoption papers now.

"Thank god," Technoblade says under his breath. Dream is inclined to agree, and launches into a rapid fire explanation of what the next few weeks are going to be like. 

What follows is a much more productive chat about the future of the plotline and their respective characters. Dream isn't sure how Wilbur is going to pull off the whole aliens thing, but if anyone can, Wilbur probably can. He's just glad he managed to convince Techno that he really can't write killing orphans into the script ("It's a joke, green man." "Not even as a joke, you know Punz will take it as a challenge.") and that this attempt to write George into the lore will work, it has to. ("This is the fifth time, Dream." "He _owes_ me." "That's disgusting!" "Oh, come on.")

Dream leans back in his chair, yawns, as the call settles down. Philza, Techno, and Tubbo have all left. Wilbur's telling Tommy something important, Dream thinks, but he isn't really paying attention anymore, his tired brain too muddled to go down any new paths. 

George is probably asleep, he thinks. call him clingy, but Dream hasn't talked to him for most of the day and misses him a little. Quackity had mockingly called them in their honeymoon phase, but it's been like this as long as Dream remembers. He's always spent so much of his time with George. _Georgeeeeeeeeeee_ , he texts, fully aware that he's being incredibly clingy. 

"I am _not_ eating sand," Tommy says, just as Dream leaves the call. He really doesn't even want to know. 

He takes his headset off, lays his head down on his desk. He's a little tired, a little worse for wear. not a conversation he expected or wanted to have today. 

His phone lights up, and he tiredly turns to look. 

_dreeeeeeeam_ , is the reply from George. Then, _ts_? 

Dream smiles, a spike of energy flowing through him again, pulls his headset back on and gets TeamSpeak up. 

"George!" he says. Settles in deeper in his chair. Lets George talking about his dream last night wash over him. 

-

Everything spills out on, of all things, a Minecraft stream, because it's their life, so of course it does. "GOTTA GO FAST," the title says, a remnant from an hour ago, when George was still speedrunning, although they've moved onto the recording server and are now seeing how many plug-ins they can get working at the same time before everything breaks apart. It's silly, and it's fun, and it feels like the old days, when they'd stream side by side with only a few thousand viewers each, just the two of them. Dream starts laughing as George breaks a block and stacks of iron ingots spill out, enough so that the server lags for nearly five seconds.

"You're such an idiot," Dream says, entirely affectionate, as George throws away the iron chestplate he just made because he forgot furnaces gave them netherite ingots.

"You're one to talk," George says as he adorns himself in black. "Ok, load the one where explosions happen everywhere we look. I want to see the TNT go off." 

Dream chuckles to himself a little, turns off the first plug-in, types in the command that'll start the plug in. The server lags again briefly before George turns his character's head and Dream's headphones are filled with the sound of explosions. George looks at the pile of TNT they've stacked up, and the whole thing goes off with a bang. 

Dream glances at his other monitor, where he has George's stream pulled off. George is wearing his red hoodie, and the flush in his cheeks compliments the color nicely, and he's laughing as he swings his character's head wildly, barely afraid of the collateral damage with the extremely OP armor Dream had spawned in for him. 

The server lags again when George decides that's the time to turn them both on at the same time, and everywhere he looks the dirt blocks are dropping stacks of purple concrete that subsequently start exploding immediately.

"Oh my god," Dream says, laughing as his game slows to a crawl. "You're gonna crash the game, you're so stupid." 

"It's gonna work, it's gonna work," George says, with his dumbass confidence he puts on when he knows for a fact he's in the wrong. "Watch," he says as both of them start moving at 1 frame per second and, as Dream watches with amusement, the stream itself lags out. George's computer gives out first, then Dream's, and ten minutes later Dream is clearing out all the plug-ins and they're sitting in a fresh world. 

"Why did you think that would ever work?" Dream says, bemused. 

"It would've been funny," George says, which is really explanation enough for anything. "Alright, the stream should be online again." 

Dream refreshes the tab - sure enough, he can see George again on Twitch, waving at the camera and hurriedly checking to make sure everything's working. 

"Is the audio working? Hello? Type 1 if you can hear me." 

"1," Dream says, a little exasperated and a lot fond. "It's working, George."

"Alright," George says, and looks directly into the camera, "I want this on the record - the stream crashing was not my fault, and is instead Dream's fault and you should all go on Twitter and tweet at him about it." 

"What?" Dream says, laughing under his breath. "What? How is that my fault? I was the one telling you not to start the plug-in, and you were the one who didn't listen to me. I’m not the one who thought it was a good idea to turn on the two exact plugins that lag out the server the most." 

"Yeah, but you're the one who coded that."

"We did it together! Literally, in the video intro you can _hear_ me say that we coded it." 

George rolls his eyes. He's glancing to his right, where the Discord call would be pulled up on his other monitor, no longer focused on the game or the stream even if Dream's camera is off.

"Okay," George says. "but you say that for _every_ video." 

Dream leans forward, grabs his mouse and starts pulling up YouTube, saying "Now you're just lying, because I definitely change it up based on who coded. Look, I'm pulling up the video where I said that _I_ coded something right now." 

"Dream, if you asked a hundred people if they pay attention during that and remember if it’s I or we coded it, I’m willing to bet ninety nine point nine nine percent of them would say they skip over it. I’ve seen those video analytics.” 

“Oh, so you're saying point zero zero one percent of a person doesn’t skip it? What is that, like their pinky toe?” 

“It’s an _analogy_ , Dream. I thought you liked to read books.”

Dream copy pastes the YouTube link into the Discord chat. “Listen, right there. _I_ coded it.”

Dream watches as George visibly opens up the link, listening to the first few seconds. “That’s not even true, look, this is an expose. I remember you screensharing that. I remember you asked me for help with that.” 

“I did the majority of it,” Dream says. 

“That’s still _we_ , Dream. That’s still a we!”

“Well,” Dream says.

“ _Well_ ,” George mocks. “I can’t believe I have to put up with this every day. Every single day, my boyfriend wakes up and chooses violence, and I have to sit here and just take it. And he feels _nothing_.” 

Dream leans his head on his hand, grinning ear from ear. “And _my_ boyfriend wakes up every day and chooses to be over dramatic,” he says. 

“You love it,” George declares. 

Dream sighs, in lieu of a response. He can’t admit he does out loud, even if it’s so true it makes him hurt, because that would be admitting defeat, and that’s something he can only manage when he’s sleep deprived and so stupidly in love it spills out. He hopes George knows that. He can feel his face heating up a little, watching the way that George is smiling too, mirroring Dream’s own expression from an ocean away, even without Dream’s camera on, even in front of 150k viewers. _150k viewers_.

Dream freezes. “George,” he says. 

“What, Dream?”

Dream can see the exact moment George realizes, the exact moment his eyes flicker back to Streamlabs and he sees the viewer count, the exact moment he rewinds the conversation back to the point where he said something he couldn’t take back. 

Because Dream can’t stop himself, he opens chat. 

And because George is a professional, and he’s been talking to Quackity and Phil about streaming, within the next minute he’s smiling again, if strained, and getting ready to end the stream, saying, “Chat, don't spam. alright, I’ve been streaming for almost three hours already - what? three hours - time to sign off. Thanks for coming by - and dreamstoes thank you for the ten gifted -” 

His voice is a hum in Dream’s ear, though, because all he can hear is the words George said, on loop, on repeat, out there for everyone to hear.

“Dream. _Dream_.”

They’d talked about it, a million times, and Dream had said he was ready, and George had said that he was ready, and all that was left was to find a way to let it all out, but he didn’t think it would come out like this, out of nowhere, when Dream wasn't prepared and George wasn't prepared and neither of them knew what to do and Dream is already dreading the Twitter DMs and Reddit posts and scrolling through his indirects and - 

“ _Dream_.”

Dream comes back to himself at George's voice, low and shaky, and he grasps at the sound like a lighthouse in the dark. "George," Dream says. 

"Dream?" 

Dream inhales, exhales, an in and out as he tries to calm himself. _This_ , he thinks in a moment of desperation, _is not pogchamp._

"George," he says again, final. Grounding. "George, are you okay?" 

There's a pause, and in that Dream can hear the deep inhale and exhale as George takes a deep breath, seemingly to gather himself. 

"Yeah, I'm fine," George says. "Closing down the stream kinda made it easier to calm myself down." he pauses. "Dream, I didn't mean to." 

Dream is quick to reassure. "No, no I know we were just both so caught up in it we forgot about the stream. I did the same thing after you did. I didn't even notice until chat started going crazy." 

"Me neither." 

Dream runs his hands through his hair, then down his face, then grabs at the little metal ball he has on his desk for who knows what reasons, fiddling with it as he talks. "It's - it's almost funny, remember last week when we were on call with Quackity and he joked about us slipping it out unplanned on stream?" 

"Quackity's a prophet," George says. "He's cracked, your honor," he says, the joke coming out exhausted and monotone. Somehow, Dream still finds it endearing, the way even now, even here, George tries to make him laugh. 

“Yeah,” Dream says. “It’s not your fault, George. It would’ve happened eventually, and we were planning on it, remember? I almost posted that twitlonger at 4am a half dozen times. This is just - earlier than anticipated. And like, with our fanbase, with the stans, they’d be so happy, and we’d finally get to pander so hard on Jackbox, except we’d get away with it because it’s _true_ and they wouldn’t be able to do shit about it. We’d be fine. We’d be fine, great even. We’d - we’d be good no matter what.” 

"Yeah,” George says. “We don't have to say anything, you know.” 

"No, I know," Dream says. "I know we don't have to." And he thinks that would almost work. They'd joked about this endlessly, even when they were still in their just friends phase, casual, joking pleas for kisses and dates. This too could become another of those, if a bit elaborate and sincere. It would be so easy to brush it all under the rug. Dream just doesn’t know if he wants to. If George wants to.

A notification from Discord. Sapnap, in the group chat all three of them have: _hey y’all okay??? my mentions r dying_

Dream watches as a small _George is typing…_ appears. He can hear George’s keyboard through the Discord call. It’s a sound he’s heard a million times before and a sound he’ll gladly hear a million times more, as familiar to him as George’s actual voice. 

_George: yeah in the vc_

_George: sex havers_

_Sapnap: ill be there asap gotta take a shit first_

Dream huffs out a laugh to himself. Good to know that despite everything, Sapnap’s still Sapnap. Then, “George… do _you_ want to? Do something.”

George groans a little, the way he does when he’s frustrated. “I don’t _know_ , Dream. Maybe? Maybe not? Maybe I just wanna play chess for the next five hours until I pass out.”

“I’m down for that.” 

Another text from Sapnap _: hope yall arent freaking out while im not there to save the day_

“He’s so stupid,” George says.

“That’s Sapnap for you,” Dream replies. “Hey, George.”  
  
“Dream.”

“I’ll be happy with whatever, you know that right? It’ll be me and you, either way.” 

Dream can hear a smile in George’s voice when he says, “The dynamic duo, huh? Don’t let Sapnap hear you, he’ll get jealous. Althought I guess look who I'm talking to.”

“Please,” Dream says, “what do you think that whole thing was, with the hot pockets last week? I do not want to hear that much of his and Karl’s mouth sounds ever again.” 

George laughs a little, quiet and soft. “Don’t bring it up again, god they’re disgusting.” 

There’s a beat of silence. Dream drops his ball on the table, picks it back up and puts it back onto its proper place. “We’ll be alright, right?” he asks, more of a confirmation than an actual question. They’ll be alright, he knows. Friends for over five years, partners for hopefully far more than that. Dream remembers meeting George in Bad’s TeamSpeak channel, all those years ago, amused at his accent and enamored by the way he rambled about coding, and thinking that he wanted to talk to him. And here they are now. Small miracles.

George huffs. “You’re an idiot, Dream,” he says, fond and affectionate, Dream’s name honey-sweet from his mouth. “Of course we will.” 

**Author's Note:**

> also, according to my ao3 statistics, only a small percentage of my readers leave a comment. so if you liked this fic, consider leaving a comment it's free and - in all seriousness ty for reading :]
> 
> my tumblr is [ducknotfound](https://ducknotfound.tumblr.com) if you're into that <3


End file.
